Year 4: A Fresh Start

Chapter 36: February 2018

The only problem with getting back to her schoolwork was that Molly had gotten so far ahead the previous year that she had already covered all the material they were learning. In transfiguration, they were studying cross-species transfigurations, a topic that Molly had mastered ages ago. In defense they were studying werewolves, but in her family that was hardly a topic that was regularly discussed, and Molly had never really needed to be taught about them.

In herbology, Professor Longbottom was teaching a unit on weeds, how they can be useful and when they need to be pruned. It was hardly an educational unit and Molly suspected it was designed to give the class a bit of a break after an intensive unit on the symbiotic relationship between certain plants and flobberworms. In history of magic, they were right in the middle of a three-month long lecture series on giant wars, a topic Molly had already fully read up on in even more detail than Professor Binns was giving.

In ancient runes, they were studying the future tense, a topic so easy Molly didn't know why it wasn't taught in first year. As for arithmancy, Molly had mastered the Agrippan method in the first month back and hardly needed to spend the entire year covering it. Molly had even gone so far as to find out what magical creatures were being studied in care of magical creatures and had read up about fairies and pixies to fill some of her time, but even that didn't occupy her for long.

"Ugh," Molly groaned one day in the library. She'd just completed her essay on the properties of knotgrass – a simple essay that had taken her less than an hour to complete. Honestly, Molly thought Professor Abbott-Longbottom should really try to be more creative with her homework assignments. Every other week, she would ask the class to write an essay on the properties of whatever ingredient they were studying, and it was getting rather repetitive.

"What's wrong?" Sarah asked without looking up from her own work. She was presently working on memorizing a map for astronomy.

"I'm just bored," Molly complained. She'd thought that having her friends back would mean that she wouldn't have this problem, but what she hadn't realized was that while she'd spent much of last year learning everything she possibly could, they'd been doing other things, like practicing quidditch. They hadn't mastered all the concepts they were currently learning in their classes, and as such required more time to complete their assignments, leaving Molly with little to entertain herself.

"You need a hobby," Julie recommended.

"I have no interest in joining some club," Molly insisted. "It would be beneath me."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Well then you're just going to have to find something to occupy your time, because we have to get through this homework."

"Maybe I can help," Molly suggested. If she lent a hand, Sarah and Julie would finish their homework sooner and it would give her something productive to do while they did.

"I don't know," Sarah said hesitantly. "It's not like you can memorize this map for me."

"True," Molly agreed. "Alright Julie, what are you working on?"

"Charms assignment," Julia declared. "But if you tell me the answers, I won't be learning."

"I could tell you which pages of the textbook to find them on," Molly suggested.

"That would defeat the purpose of the activity," Julia insisted. "I'm supposed to have to hunt for them myself and in the process learn a thing or two."

Molly grumbled. Obviously her friends weren't interested in having her help them out.

"I know!" Molly declared suddenly. "I could make flashcards for you guys. To quiz you on stuff from our classes."

"If you think that would keep you entertained," Julia agreed readily. "Then please, go right ahead."

Molly smiled. This was perfect. In making the flashcards, she'd be helping herself by revising, even if she already knew all the material by heart. And then she could help her friends by testing them. And all the whole, she'd have something fun to do!

Molly immediately got out a stack of empty parchment and charmed it to cut itself up into smaller card-sized rectangles for her to write on. Then she pulled out her transfiguration textbook, deciding to start there and work her way through all their subjects.

Coming up with questions for the flashcards was fun. It was sort of like last May, when she'd come up with lists of questions for each of her courses, except that she wrote the questions on the front of the flashcards and the answers on the back. On some of the flashcards, instead of writing a question, she would write an instruction, like 'perform the summoning charm', and on the back she would include the instructions so that the flashcards would offer practical as well as theoretical help.

It took her the better part of two days to get through all nine of their courses, but by the time she was finished, she was quite proud of herself. She'd color-coded the flashcards by subject: red for transfiguration, blue for charms, orange for defence against the dark arts, and so on. And now that she was finished, she was beyond excited to try them out on her friends and see how tricky she'd managed to be.

"All finished," Molly declared, joining Sarah and Julie in the library. Presently, Sarah was working on a series of translations for ancient runes while Julie was frantically scribbling out a conclusion to their most recent essay on the giant wars.

"Finished?" Sarah frowned as she flipped through her runic dictionary to look up a rune that she was having trouble with.

"With the flashcards," Molly said. "Remember how I was going to make flashcards for all our classes, to quiz you?"

"Oh, right," Sarah muttered. "That."

"So, are you ready?" Molly asked. "Who wants to go first?"

"I can't," Sarah insisted. "I've got to get these translations done."

"Alright," Molly agreed readily. The translations were due the following day after all, and while Molly didn't condone leaving homework to the last minute, she understood the importance of getting it done now. "Julie, you look like you're just about finished with that essay. How about you?"

Julie scribbled the final sentence of her essay and dropped her quill in satisfaction.

"Sorry Molly, I can't," she said, rolling up her essay and shoving her things into her bag. "I've got quidditch practice in ten minutes."

"Quidditch practice?" Molly frowned. "Not again!"

"Sorry," Julie said. "With Debbie missing, we've had to put in a lot of extra time to get the new chaser up to speed. With Debbie on the team, we had the same lineup as last year, but with her gone, this new girl doesn't know any of our plays."

"Well what am I supposed to do with these flashcards now?" Molly demanded. "What was the point of making them if neither of you have time to be quizzed?"

"Look Molly, we're sorry," Sarah spoke up. "It's not that I wouldn't love to try out the flashcards, I just don't have time right now. Maybe when I have less homework, I can take a look?"

"Sure, whatever," Molly muttered, dropping the flashcards to the bottom of her bag.

"Hey, at least it gave you something to do," Julie pointed out.

"I could have been doing something more productive," Molly insisted. "Instead of revising material I already know."

"Like what?" Julie challenged. "It's not like you can't already to non-verbal magic."

"No, but I can't do wandless magic yet," Molly said.

"That's really advanced," Sarah frowned. "Even half the seventh years never manage it."

"Well I'm going to," Molly declared, determined. Without another word, she stalked off into the stacks to seek out a book on the subject so that she could fully read up on it before attempting anything. But just as she was starting to peruse the titles, her younger sister appeared with their cousin Vanessa, the daughter of their mother's brother.

"Lucy, Vanessa," she acknowledged them. "I didn't know you two were hanging out."

Lucy proceeded to explain that Vanessa was having some trouble with a dormmate and that they needed someone to perform a homing spell. Homing spells were quite advanced, in fact they were taught in seventh year defence class, right before the unit on wandless magic. And though Molly's original plan had been to try her hand at the most difficult branch of magic taught at Hogwarts, she supposed that learning a homing spell would be a significant challenge. And it wasn't as though she wouldn't have plenty more free time over the course of the year in which to learn wandless magic afterwards.

"Give me a week and I should have this mastered," Molly told her sister and cousin confidently. It wasn't much time, but Vanessa seemed to be in a hurry, and Molly enjoyed a challenge.

As soon as Lucy and Vanessa had departed, Molly switched her search and sought out a book on homing spells. For the purposes of this task, Molly wouldn't have to learn all of them, but rather only one. She decided to start with the simplest looking one, knowing that she would have plenty of time to learn more complicated ones later on.

Once she'd found an appropriate book, she settled in and began to read. Last year, she'd read ahead in all her subjects and learned spells way beyond her own level. But she had yet to foray into the territory of seventh-year magic and immediately upon cracking open the book on homing spells, she knew that she was in for a busy week.

"Why are you wasting your time on homing spells?" Sarah asked the following day as Molly took notes as she read. She'd taken the book out of the library and she and Sarah were currently working in the common room – Julie had another quidditch practice. "I thought you were going to study wandless magic."

"I thought this could be a nice warm-up," Molly declared. "Why?"

"I don't know," Sarah shrugged. "Wandless magic would just be really cool."

"It would," Molly agreed longingly.

She could only imagine her classmates' and professors' faces if she were to walk into class and start performing all her magic without a wand in hand. Of course, it would likely take a while to get to that point. As she understood it, learning wandless magic worked much along the same lines as learning regular magic. She'd have to start with the basic spells and work her way up. And performing a wandless levitation charm wouldn't be quite as spectacular as a wandless stunning spell.

"But maybe skipping straight to the end isn't the best way," Sarah said then. "You're right to try something easier first."

"That's not – " Molly began, but then stopped herself. Perhaps Sarah had a point. Perhaps there was a certain logic to making sure she'd covered all the material covered prior to wandless magic before taking up that particular challenge. There were still tons of other spells to master. Molly had never been one for the dramatic. As much as it was a nice idea to walk into class and flaunt her wandless skills, she was more pragmatic than that.

She decided on a new plan. She would go to each of her professors and request copies of their syllabuses for their fifth, sixth, and seventh year classes and would slowly work her way through the material. She wouldn't push herself to jump to the end, that wouldn't benefit her anyway. And soon, she'd be the youngest student at Hogwarts to have mastered all the material up to and including the N.E.W.T.s. This was a goal worth pursuing.

But first she had to fulfill her promise to Lucy and Vanessa and master this homing spell.

Over the next few days, Molly spent a great deal of time holed up in her dormitory where she wouldn't be interrupted. She needed the quiet and the calm to be able to focus on the spell she needed to learn, and the busy common room wasn't the place for it. The library would have been fine if not for Madam Maxwell's rule about practicing spells in her library.

Finally, after many failed attempts, Molly started to feel something. She'd been practicing by casting the homing spell with one of her textbooks in mind. She'd placed it across the room with the goal that the spell would home in on it, even though it was close-by and she knew where it was. She knew the thing Vanessa needed her to find would be more complicated to locate, but she needed to practice somehow.

Just as she was starting to feel a little more confident and had started thinking about casting the spell on something further away, perhaps an object down in the common room, Lucy burst into her dorm, all urgency and determination.

"Tell me you can do the spell," Lucy demanded without preamble.

Molly explained that one more day would ensure that the spell was perfected, but Lucy insisted that they had to do the spell now. Apparently, the girl that had been tormenting Vanessa had stolen her stuffed bunny rabbit and Lucy was adamant that they act now.

Though Molly had very little clue what was really going on with the two younger girls, she'd agreed to help, and so she followed Lucy out into the corridor to join up with Vanessa and then found an empty classroom where she could prepare the spell. She had Vanessa describe the stuffed bunny in as much detail as possible and used her knowledge of Vanessa herself to guide her towards this precious possession.

The homing spell worked just as it was supposed to, which surprised Molly and made her feel very proud of herself. She'd had her fears that she wouldn't be able to do it once the item was further away than across the room, but with only a few moments of uncertainty, she was able to follow the spell's pull all the way to the edge of the forest, where a hole had been dug and Vanessa's possessions had been buried.

"You said Vanessa's roommate stole her things?" Molly asked Lucy as Vanessa brushed the dirt off of them. "And then buried them in the woods?"

"Yeah," Lucy nodded. "I know, it seems odd, but that's what Vanessa said."

Once Vanessa had recovered everything, Lucy questioned her about the strangeness of the circumstance, but Vanessa seemed to think it made total sense to have her things buried in the woods. Molly wasn't as convinced. No matter how much Flora Bailey didn't like her, she would never steal Molly's things and then hide them, especially not out in the woods. Something didn't add up, but whatever was going on seemed to be between Lucy and Vanessa, so Molly did her best to stay out of it.

Once Molly got back to her room, she picked up the book on homing spells and casually began to flip through it. There were tons of other homing spells that existed and now that she'd learned one, she was kind of intrigued at the thought of learning more. Like the one that could be cast on an object to force it to home in on the person that owns it. Or the one that could be cast on an actual living person to locate someone who's trying to evade you. There were so many possibilities, and now that Molly had piqued her interest, she wasn't sure she could back away without mastering more of them.

"What happened to going to all the professors and working your way through all the material?" Sarah asked later when she saw Molly taking notes on a new homing spell.

"I decided that was a stupid idea," Molly declared. "I'm going to have to learn it all eventually, and if I rush things then I'll never get to learn something new in class ever again. I have to ration my learning."

"So instead you're going to learn every homing spell there is?" Sarah asked.

"Think about it," Molly insisted. "Professor Derlid can't possibly teach all homing spells in his seventh-year class. He probably focuses on a few main ones that best demonstrate the theory. This way, I'm not just learning the material early, but in even more depth than I ever would if I took seventh-year defence.

"What do you mean 'if you take seventh-year defence'?" Sarah frowned. "Surely you're not putting in all this work for a class you don't intend to continue in?"

"Well I don't know exactly," Molly admitted. "I haven't decided which N.E.W.T. classes I intend to take yet. It's only fourth year after all."

"Well what about your career?" Sarah asked. "Have you thought about that at all? Because maybe a better use of your time, now that you're so far ahead of the rest of us, would be to learn things that would be useful for whatever job you want to pursue."

Molly thought about this idea for a moment. There was honestly some value to Sarah's suggestion. The only problem was, Molly had no idea what career she wanted to pursue. She'd been so focused on learning for learning's sake that she hadn't taken the time to think about how she might want to put her knowledge to use. But if she wanted to be a healer, there was hardly any point in learning homing spells. And if she wanted to be an auror, then it was hardly productive to spend hours reading up on the history of wizarding medicine.

Maybe Molly had something she needed to think about after all. Maybe her next step wasn't learning wandless magic, or working her way through the Hogwarts curriculum, but getting a head start on learning the specifics for whatever job she wanted to pursue in the future. Of course, first she'd had to figure out what that was.